Abstract—This paper investigates several schemes to improve
the performance of the enhanced Physical Downlink Control
Channel (ePDCCH) in Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTEA)
networks by means of Intercell Interference Coordination
(ICIC). Given the flexible design of the ePDCCH, based on
frequency division multiplexing, static ICIC techniques such
as Soft Frequency Reuse (SFR) can be applied and hence,
performance degradations at cell edges can be avoided in contrast
to its antecesor, the Physical Downlink Control Channel
(PDCCH) in LTE. The study is focused in realistic/irregular
deployments, where the amount of intercell interference received
at different cells varies considerably making very difficult the
task of homogenizing the performance of the ePDCCH over the
coverage area. In order to address this problem, the proposed
multiobjective scheme adjusts the configuration of SFR at cell
level. The problem formulation includes several performance
metrics including spectral efficiency, cell edge performance, consumption/
amount of control resources and energy requirements.
The results reveal that the proposed scheme is able to (1) reduce
the average consumption of control resources and, (2) minimize
energy needs without penalizing the capacity of data channels.